IT creates its own virtuous circle

More data equals more managers

"You don't have to be a software engineer to be involved in technology," says Jeff Judge.

Joel Basgall, CEO at Oakbrook Terrace-based Geneca LLC, sounds like a recruiter at a job fair.

“We need every role related to software development,” he says. “We need business development roles, we need recruiting roles, marketing roles—you name it, we need it.”

Geneca touts itself as a tech company capable of avoiding the delays associated with building custom software. Two dozen of the company's 109 employees came on board in 2011, and Mr. Basgall, 46, plans to accelerate hiring this year. Among the 40 or so jobs he's looking to fill: sales, project manager, business analyst and developer.

Mr. Basgall suspects one of the forces powering growth in the industry is the maturing relationship between companies' business and information-technology sides.

“Business really is looking to IT not as a necessary evil, but as a partner,” he says.

The fast growth of Chicago's tech industry doesn't surprise Jeff Judge, CEO of Signal, a West Loop company that helps businesses combine mobile, social media and email marketing. Because technology is the backbone for other industries, Mr. Judge says, it perpetuates itself.

“As companies invest more heavily in technology—it's a cycle—there's just more investment needed,” he says. “As you have more data, you need more people to manage the data.”

But job candidates from other industries assume they need a technical background to work in the field. Not true.

“You don't have to be a software engineer to be involved in technology,” Mr. Judge says. “The actual number of programmers involved in technology is actually pretty small compared to the whole industry. There's a whole ecosystem around technology.”

Signal, in fact, plans to hire for some of those “ecosystem” positions in 2012. The 15-person company wants to add another five to 10 employees, including sales, product developers, marketers with social media savvy and an office manager. (It's looking for software engineers, too.)

Hiring also continues at Savo Group, which doubled its headcount in 2011 to 123 employees. CEO Mark O'Connell says that will grow by another 50 to 75 people in 2012. Savo sells software that improves communication within a client's salesforce.

Correction: Savo Group had 123 workers at the beginning of 2011 and nearly doubled its staffing over the following 12 months. Its staffing levels were misreported in a Jan. 16 Focus story.

Although Chicago tech startups like Savo have gotten plenty of ink in recent years, the city remains one of “the best kept secrets” in the industry, Mr. O'Connell, 56, says. Still, the coasts continue to exert a gravitational pull on college graduates.

“There's big sex appeal to go flying out and live in San Jose or Palo Alto and working in one of the companies that has a lot of visibility, or go out to the East Coast and jump into a biotech company,” he says. But “there are plenty of exciting opportunities here for people to have a great career and make a lot of money.”

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The coasts continue to exert a gravitational pull on college graduates.